4 Easy Steps to Convince Your Clients or Boss to Invest More in Mobile

Convincing clients and your senior management team to invest more in mobile advertising can be a difficult task. Statistically, mobile user’s conversion rates are lower. In addition, we’re officially in a multi-screen world, where users could start their journey on mobile devices and complete an action on more user-friendly devices, such as desktops, laptops, and tablets; therefore the last click receives full attribution for the conversion as the user is lost.

Google has recently announced the ability to track users across devices to help fill this gap. You can read more about this announcement here. I’m really excited to see how this actually works when fully rolled out; unfortunately your client needs at least 50 conversions a day to have a higher chance of seeing ‘estimated conversions’ which definitely excludes a lot of advertisers.

Invest more in mobile today

The point of this article is to pave the way for you to convince your clients and/or superiors to start investing more in mobile today—this includes mobile search, mobile display, and mobile conversion elements such as mobile-specific landing pages or responsive design. The information below, if presented correctly should be more than enough data to persuade your clients to invest more in mobile.

Mobile Growth Data

There are plenty of sources showing the behavioral change of today’s internet user. I cited the Washington Post below:

Mobile advertising increased 145% in the first half of this year, to $3 billion

Traditional web search (i.e desktop) revenue is at its lowest point since 2007 as mobile revenue saw a huge growth to 15%.

Industry-Specific Data

Industry data is perhaps the most relevant as you can give your client’s an idea as to what their competitors are doing and what is actually happening in their industry.

Our Google team is able to provide us with industry-specific data upon request to show year over year search trends, such as query growth by device, click-through rate and average CPC change, among others.

I have reviewed over 15 reports in various industries and all data reflects the following:

Desktop search is stagnant (0%-10% growth on average) and even down in some industries (saw down as low as 16%).

Mobile and Tablet search is growing incredible fast (40%+ to 120%+).

Mobile traffic is (on average) cheaper than desktop. Every single report I looked at showed mobile devices were significantly cheaper than desktop and tablet.

Google Analytics Client-Specific Data

Another important source to use is your own data! Even if you are currently not bidding on mobile traffic via PPC (i.e. bid modifiers are set to -100%), you are definitely still receiving traffic organically or from direct visits. Use this data to show the growth your client is receiving year over year.

Visit Growth: The client below didn’t think their audience was using mobile device to purchase their products. The numbers speak for themselves…

Conversion Growth: You can also see the massive jump in conversions and revenue comparing the two same date ranges, just 2012 vs. 2013.

Google AdWords-Specific Data

Finally, if you’re fortunate to have some mobile currently running in AdWords, but maybe not across the majority of the campaigns; leverage this data to seal the deal.

Other important client factors to consider:

Does your company or client value phone calls? If so, according to a recent study, 70% of mobile users use the ‘click 2 call’ directly from Google SERPs. In addition, “Calls are most important to mobile searchers who are researching (52 percent) or ready to buy (61 percent).”

Is your client’s web site (landing pages) mobile friendly or even responsive? How does the conversion rate compare between various devices? Make sure to test the landing pages you are using from mobile devices and tablets to see if you’re giving your campaigns the best chance at being successful.

In conclusion, investing in mobile is a no-brainer at this point. There are plenty of external and internal sources to prove this point and if you’re not taking the initiative, your competitors are – and you will be left in the dust.